Penn Jillette Quotations

I don't believe the majority always knows what's best for everyone.

Don't waste too much time wishing, hoping, and being envious; it'll make you bugnutty.

Democracy without respect for individual rights sucks. It's just ganging up against the weird kid, and I'm always the weird kid.

When you're watching Psycho, there' s that moment when you have a visceral reaction to watching someone being stabbed. And then you have the intellectual revelation that you're not, and that's where the celebration comes in.

If I had to imagine omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent power in the universe that chose to make my mother suffer, I don't know how I would make that make sense in the universe.

The secret truth of 'Celebrity Apprentice' is that it isn't very hard... 'Celebrity Apprentice' is easy like junior high is easy. All the arithmetic, the creative writing and the history are super simple, but like junior high, you do that easy work surrounded by people who are full-tilt, hormone-raging bug nutty.

Freedom means the freedom to be stupid, and that's what I want.

You have to be careful as a libertarian because you can sound very Republican.

There is this tremendous amount of arrogance and hubris, where somebody can look at something for five minutes and dismiss it. Whether you talk about gaming or 20th century classical music, you can't do it in five minutes. You can't listen to 'The Rite of Spring' once and understand what Stravinsky was all about.

If you like the stuff I do, my chances of liking you go up.

Direct confrontation, direct conversation is real respect. And it's amazing how many people get that.

Religion cannot and should not be replaced by atheism. Religion needs to go away and not be replaced by anything. Atheism is not a religion. It's the absence of religion, and that's a wonderful thing.

You have two choices with Obama. You either believe that he is a man of Christ... or you think he's a liar. And I'm surprised by the number of atheist free thinkers that support Obama, and their argument is essentially, 'He's lying about being religious 'cause you have to do that to get elected.' It's a horrible reason to like somebody.

Poker has the feeling of a sport, but you don't have to do push-ups.

From 1985 to 1994, I lived in Manhattan in a big old loft right off Times Square. I could walk to work, which was in a couple of Broadway theaters, to Howard Stern's studio, and to 30 Rock for 'Letterman' and 'SNL.' Even in New York, walking to work is homey and folksy, like living in a small town.

If you spend a lot of time lying to people, you think a lot about what the truth means.

Behaving morally because of a hope of reward or a fear of punishment is not morality.

It's amazing to me how many people think that voting to have the government give poor people money is compassion. Helping poor and suffering people yourself is compassion. Voting for our government to use guns to give money to help poor and suffering people is immoral, self-righteous, bullying laziness.

Bacon is so good by itself that to put it in any other food is an admission of failure. You're basically saying, 'I can't make this other food taste good, so I'll throw in bacon.'

I like to read in the dark. I like to go into the bathtub, turn out all the lights, and in the dark, read my books.

'Psycho' is fascinating philosophically, because the point of 'Psycho' is that everything that's bad happens because of love.

I'm always surprised when the corporate world does stupid things, because they're often not very stupid in hindsight.

A lot of people, to attack an outspoken atheist, one of the things they'll do is say, 'You are as bad as the fundamentalist Christians.' And my answer is always, 'I hope so.'

I've voted Libertarian as long as I can remember, but I don't really remember much before the Clintons and the Bushes. Those clans made a lot of us bugnutty.

I love when violent, dangerous art is done by people who are not violent and dangerous. I love that when George Romero was making 'Dawn of the Dead,' he was coaching his son's little league team.

My hair is way, way long. I've hitchhiked across the country a zillion times. I've ridden in every car. I was never a hippie. It takes more than long hair.

But it's much more exciting to make Die Hard. One of the reasons that I think that movie is so successful is it deals with those very important blue-collar relationship themes. But it's more visually beautiful to show things blowing up. It just gives you more on the screen.

Religion is often just tribalism: pride in a group one was born into, a group that is often believed to have 'God' on its side.

I don't want anyone as president who promises to take care of me. I may be stupid, but I want a chance to try to be a grown-up and take care of my family.

The highest ideals are human intelligence, creativity and love. Respect these above all.

It's only the losers named 'Dave' that think having an unusual name is bad, and who cares what they think? They're named 'Dave.'

My tolerance for crazy people is, I think, high a tolerance as you're ever going to find. I love being around David Allen Coe. I would have loved to hang out with Tiny Tim. I can listen to Sun Ra on a tape-recording rant.

My body really, really wanted to reproduce when I was 15. It took a lot of civilization, socialization, willpower and some emulsion polymerization technology for me not to reproduce at 15.

You have in Vegas the most heterogeneous audience you're gonna get anywhere in the country. In Boston, Chicago, Miami, you know who goes to the theater. In Vegas, you have people who only see one theater show a year, and it's in Vegas.

People still seem to think that they should vote themselves money. They seem to think there is stuff which they think is the government's job, when it's really the individual's job.

Religion is faith. Faith is belief without evidence. Belief without evidence cannot be shared. Faith is a feeling. Love is also a feeling, but love makes no universal claims. Love is pure.

I don't think I'm made of the right stuff to be a politician. I think I'm made to be a loose cannon.

I think voting for the lesser of two evils in game theory always leads to more evil.

Tolerance is you saying something crazy and me smiling and saying, 'That's nice.'

Juggling is very, very straightforward; very, very black and white; you're manipulating objects, not people. And that's always appealed to me.

I'm not misunderstood. I am brash. I make my living being brash.

When I was 15, 16, 17 years old, I spent five hours a day juggling, and I probably spent six hours a day seriously listening to music. And if I were 16 now, I would put that time into playing video games.

A lot of older parents worry about being older parents. I hear people say, 'I don't want to be too old to play baseball with my son.' They worry that their kids will be embarrassed by their parents' age.

One of the things that Teller and I are obsessed with, one of the reasons that we're in magic, is the difference between fantasy and reality.

The only place we were really told to tone it down - where other people would use the word censorship, but I wouldn't - was when we did MTV right after the Beavis and Butt-head thing.

Someone who is a good person should have no fear of the government whatsoever.

The most important part of life is work, it's the flow, it's getting stuff done, feeling like you're doing something.

'Moxie' is a name that was created by an American for the first national soft drink and then went on to mean chutzpah, and that's nice.

Every nut who kills people has a Bible lying around.

I love the idea that horror and fear is a celebration of health and life.

When I was a kid, politicians wanted to avoid talking about religion if they could. John F. Kennedy couldn't duck the issue, being Catholic and all. So how did he address it? By reminding Americans that religion shouldn't be an issue, that he was concentrating on big things like poverty and hunger and leading the space race.

Barack Obama is way smarter than Bush - so way, way smarter than me. Obama is way more charismatic than me.

I'm a hardcore libertarian - I want everything legal - but I also believe that you have the right to free association.

It is really funny to see people that you know acting unpleasantly just because there are TV cameras on.

'Celebrity Apprentice' has more integrity and is the most straightforward show I've ever seen.

I like things matching. I have an upright bass, a drum kit and a grand piano that's the same color. I tend to overthink things.

Every day, TV, newspapers, and the Internet bombard us with a message that we're destroying the earth. Ice caps are melting, rivers are dying, polar bears are drowning, and trees are doing something.

Having a Hummer is stupid. It's stupid to waste that much gas. It's stupid to waste that much money on gas. It's stupid to parade your insecurities on public roads. Hummers are stupid-looking.

When I buy Windows 98, I'm not only buying something useful, I'm giving money to Bill Gates, which is a really good thing.

The pure unadulterated disgust of Washington seems to me to be a really good thing.

I have no evidence that libertarianism leads to a better life. I just think it is morally right.

I will forever stick up for Catholics and Christians in general. With a small number of very horrible exceptions, they do play by the rules.

People like Bill Maher, who brags about being a cynic, it sickens me. I am the least cynical person I know, and I am very, very skeptical.

The vast majority of people who have mental illness problems never hurt anybody.

If you want to turn out an atheist child, unconditional love constantly is a good way to do it.

I don't believe in vengeance. Really, when all is said and done, I probably don't believe in punishment.

The purpose of art is to collide the intellectual and visceral together at the highest speed possible.

Even if I disagree with Obama on many, many things, he is certainly qualified to be president. He is certainly competent to be president.

I never wanted to be a magician. I never wanted to be a comedian. I never wanted to be onstage.

To drive a car in rural America is freedom. Before I had a car, I'd never seen a rock and roll show, I'd never seen a comic or a show.

I think one of the things about Donald Trump that's interesting is he lives in a rarified atmosphere where it's possible that he doesn't get enough feedback, enough people rolling their eyes at him. It's a danger more in show business than it is with wealth.

I believe in individual rights so much that I don't like any sort of 'what's good for the cause'-type questions.

The Tea Party claims to want small government.

I believe the fast track to atheism is reading the Bible. I've read it three times all the way through. It's a big part of our culture, a big part of our history. I don't just read things I agree with.

I have a very specific definition of censorship. Censorship must be done by the government or it's not censorship.

Modern American magic, late 20th century magic, is tremendously disrespectful of the audience.

There is no reason for the government to limit political speech.

I didn't learn fire-eating to conquer my fears. I learned fire-eating because I desperately wanted to be in show business.

My parents were teetotalers and my grandparents were - it's all the way back. It's New English puritanical tradition.

The medium is not the message - the message is the message.

There never was a God. 'God is dead' is a halfway measure I won't go with.

TV networks are dying. The death throes of religion give us jihads. The death throes of television give us reality shows.

When you tell other people to do stuff they don't know how to do, they tend to freak out.

Before you can read, you know the difference between a story and reality. And, of course, by the time you're old enough to do any real damage with an Uzi, you've learned that difference.

The First Amendment says nothing about your getting paid for saying anything. It just says you can say it. I don't believe that if a corporation pulls all the money out of you or a network pulls their money away or you get fired, you're being censored.

Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That's good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.

I am a huge fan of proselytizing. I am a huge fan of speaking your mind. The only way we can share the universe... is by talking very strongly about what we believe.

I had e-mail in 1984! I had an e-mail address then, which means that all you could write to was Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. There were three of us, writing to each other.

I'm a big fan of gospel music, and you cannot be a fan of rock and roll, you cannot be a fan of country western music, and you can't really be a fan of jazz without listening to a lot of music that's religious.

I was always a little embarrassed when there was an act on television that requires a great deal of skill but is a little goofy, and the host comes over and acts like the person doing this skill is some sort of fool for having learned to do something that's very, very difficult.

Performers have the right to say what they want to, and anyone paying money has the right to accept or reject the art and entertainment that's available.

If you don't pay your taxes and you don't answer the warrant and you don't go to court, eventually someone will pull a gun. Eventually someone with a gun will show up. I want everything the government does to be done, I just want it to be done voluntarily.

In my run-ins with Christians... I find that they really are good moral people. And we overlap on everything, and they don't seem to be the kind of people that are waiting to hear voices to tell them what to do.

Once you have somebody that is telling you, 'We are interpreting God for you,' it seems like you either agree or you don't. You either say, like Martin Luther, 'I'm going to have a direct relationship with the word of God,' or I''m going to go through a conduit of God on Earth,' which would be the Pope.

I will not counter the insanity of the PATRIOT Act with an overblown fear of my rights being taken away.

If I were trying to avoid embarrassment, I wouldn't have stumbled my way through 'Dancing with the Stars.'

If you want to talk about magic, the stuff that blows me away is the stuff that's done close up.

In reality, many people let go of religion later in life.

Jay-Z, he knows precisely who he's going for - 14-year-old white suburban girls.

Obama is a great leader. He can fire people up and get them to do what he wants.